1168: How Smart Finance Looks Before It Leaps | Alistair Gurney, CFO, Lucanet

Early in Lucanet’s expansion, two Chinese employees working in Germany had a moment of insight. Seeing how configurable the consolidation software was, they believed it could succeed in their home market. Acting on that conviction, they traveled from Berlin back to China and built what would become Lucanet’s Chinese business. The story illustrates how a tool designed for global complexity could travel easily across borders, Gurney tells us.

Lucanet’s origins are firmly rooted in Germany, where the company first built its reputation with a consolidation platform designed for companies operating across multiple jurisdictions. That design decision proved foundational. Because customers often consolidate entities across countries, the platform had to integrate financial data from different jurisdictions and support multiple accounting frameworks, Gurney tells us. The system can report under German GAAP, IFRS, or different management accounting rules and allows users to toggle between those views efficiently, he tells us.

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Today, the company’s geographic reach reflects that original cross-border orientation. While Germany remains Lucanet’s strongest market, the company now operates across Europe and Asia, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, China, and Singapore, Gurney tells us. Increasingly, a majority of new customer bookings come from outside Lucanet’s historical DACH and Netherlands markets, he tells us.

Growth has also been shaped by capital structure changes. After roughly eighteen years as a founder-run business, HG Capital made a majority investment in 2022, accelerating both product development and geographic expansion, Gurney tells us.

For Gurney, who joined Lucanet at the start of May last year, the company’s focus remains clear: build tools that make the Office of the CFO more effective across borders and systems, he tells us.